Last year I left a job in radio for what I thought at the time were some pretty good reasons. I still do.
It left a lot of people scratching their heads and questioning my sanity.
There really is no percentage to be gained in questioning my sanity.
With that in mind here are the top ten reasons why I quit my job:
10: Resign? I thought it said re-sign!
9. Got a great job selling Amway
8. Got a great job selling Mary Kay
7. Making comfortable living off pictures of high ranking Entercom brass with farm animals
8. Devoting full time to weight loss. Now down 300 pounds! Eat your heart out Karen Carpenter!
7. Wanted to sell water and salt door to door
6. Found a job with even more meetings
5. Two words. Free time
4. Two more words. No Salespeople
3. Resign? I thought it said re-sign!
2. Wanted to see more daytime TV
and the number one reason Jim quit
1. Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
With apologies to Dave Letterman
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3 comments:
for the brief amount of time when i didn't have anywhere to go... for about 2 weeks in Manchester CT back in February of '98... without a job, car, or anywhere to live... i have to say that i have never felt more 'free' in my life then at that time. February in Tennessee is no where near as harsh as Connecticut, but i can't help but think of that time out there in the cold every year.
this one particular day really sticks out in my mind...
i was sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day near the library where i normally slept early in the morning, reading my bible. this woman with a large golden retriever comes and sits next to me, and proceeds to feed her dog bread from this great bread store down the road called 'Harvest Bread Company'.
keep in mind that i had not eaten anything in a couple of days, so to see this dog getting this wonderful bread (i can still smell it!) was just a little difficult.
i stumbled across this verse in my reading in Matthew 15 while i sat there:
26He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
27"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
the context of this verse was based on a Canaanite woman who came before the Lord to ask Him to heal her daughter of demon possession. at the time, Jesus was only ministering to the Jewish people, and had not yet begun his ministry to the gentiles. because of her faith, He did heal her daughter... and Jesus' ministry to the gentiles began.
the irony here is that i am a gentile... but because of my belief in Christ, I am now also able to take part in the inheritance (as one of the children mentioned in vs. 26) ... and yet here this dog was eating better than i had in days!
it really solidified for me in that moment the promises that God has made to me as a child in His kingdom, but also my lack of faith in those promises! We've all heard the following verse:
Matthew 6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
pretty assuring for a guy with nothing left to lose.
i've seen studies about how faith / religiosity (which i think are independent of one another, as there is little faith required to be 'religious') correlates to wealth and poverty... and how the greater the wealth, the less faith / religiosity a nation has... and conversely how nations with less wealth (like Africa) have people with greater faith / religiosity.
some people seem to think that this is more to do with education than wealth, with the correlation being made that wealthy nations have educated people, and the inference being that educated people have less faith, and therefore people with faith are uneducated.
the US is always an out-lier / anomaly of sorts with these studies, where we have a really high GDP (as though the GDP is really a great measure of a nation's wealth?) ... and also an above average ratio of religious folks. the number of educated here in this country is also higher than many ... so that sort of trumps the education theory.
perhaps it is because countries with wealth have free trade / free market philosophies that sustain that wealth, and countries with a philosophy of freedom are usually free to seek spirituality? how does that explain Africa with it's corrupt governments and low GDP, but extremely high ratio of people who believe in something greater than themselves?
i bring all this up because of your statement 'freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose'. i myself been struggling to define what freedom really means. having been stripped of all my worldly possessions at one point in my life, i can see how not having anything left to lose would at least give you freedom from those things that you already lost... but i think that freedom is still much more (or by your definition, 'less') than that.
a life of simplicity is really not all that simple... like a man drowning in an inch of water, it is easy to become slave to even the very idea of simplicity.
what happens if you lose freedom itself? are you still free?
I have thought of quitting my job and doing something less stressfull...especially lately.
It seems the more money i make the more responsability and the more stress and problems and bills.
I miss the days when all i needed to worry about was where my next meal and pack of smokes was going to come from....if i quit now and dropped everything i wouldnt even have to worry about the smokes, just the food.
I would miss the travel however, and being able to go up to the mountain whenever, and having a gym.
So i guess, money giveth and money taketh away.
As always, life is just a balance.
Gosh-and all this time I just thought "Freedoms just another word for nothing less to lose" was just aline from a Janis Joplin tune, penned by Kris Kristofferson.
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